The History of Laser Printers
Laser printing is one of the most commonly used printing technologies in the office now. It uses the principle of electrophotography to scan a specific area of the photosensitive drum with a laser to form an electrostatic image, which absorbs the charged toner and transfers it to the paper. Laser printing technology originated in Silicon Valley, USA. In 1969, Armstrong successfully landed on the moon, and mankind stood on the moon for the first time. At the same time, many technological inventions with far-reaching impact on life were born in Silicon Valley. Laser printing is one of them.
In 1969, Gary Starkweather, a researcher at Xerox Research Institute in New York, invented the technology of laser scanning imaging drum and transferring paper. On this basis, in 1977 Xerox PaloAlto Research Center developed the first laser printer Xerox9700. It may be very different from what we imagined. It is a large-scale production equipment with a half-person height. The printing accuracy has reached 300dpi (now generally 600dpi or 1200dpi), and the printing speed is as high as 120 pages per minute. This model was widely used in the printing of credit card bills, bank receipts, and utility bills in the following ten years, and was not discontinued until 1997. Starkweather was also selected into the American Inventors Hall of Fame for this invention.
In 1976, IBM designed a commercial laser printer IBM3800 for computing centers and data centers, with a printing speed of up to 215 pages per minute and a price of 300,000 US dollars, which is extremely expensive. In 1979, Canon launched the first desktop laser printer LBP-10, which was smaller in size, cheaper in price, and more affordable and affordable for enterprises; visually, it was about the same size as an electric oven, and Canon laser printers are still there today. The name of LBP (LaserBeamPrinter) is used.
Later, Canon developed the CX, a greatly improved laser printing engine. Apple and Hewlett-Packard cooperated with Canon to develop their own small desktop laser printers based on the CX engine.
In 1981, XeroxStar8010 became the first laser printer for office applications; in 1984, HP introduced the first popular small laser printer LaserJet, and Apple soon launched its own laser printer LaserWriter. Hewlett-Packard laser printing came from behind, and now it has been the top spot in the desktop laser printing market for many years; Apple laser printers use PostScript page description language, which unifies the form of computer fonts and image printing, which is also indispensable.
At that time, even a desktop laser printer cost thousands of dollars. In 1990, HP introduced the first laser printer LaserJetIIP with a value of less than one thousand dollars. Later, the price of the printer dropped all the way. Now laser printers have become much more affordable, often priced at around a hundred dollars. They have brought convinience to millions of households around the globe.